To the Edge of Sorrow

November 18, 2019
Set in Ukraine near the end of WWII, this spirited novel from Appelfeld (The Iron Tracks) presents a portrait of a band of Jewish resistance fighters struggling to stay alive. The story is narrated by 17-year-old Edmund, one of several dozen partisans who have escaped transport from a ghetto and fled to the nearby forest. The group is a microcosm of the society they knew—men and women, old and young, with different educations and beliefs. Determined initially to evade a German army in retreat from Russia, the group’s leaders eventually steer them to rescuing Jews from trains bound for concentration camps, a fateful decision with bittersweet consequences. Appelfeld (1932–2018) describes the daily hardships and travails of the partisans in near-reportorial detail and endows all of his characters with sympathetic personalities born out of their discussions of philosophy, the moral choices they make, the books they’ve read, the traditions they celebrate, and their fond memories of life before the war. This powerful tale of lives lived amid the duress and horrors of war is unflinching in its authenticity.